An Age of Magic

I’ll have two tickets to Mars please

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Believe it or not but scientists reckon we are just two years away from space tourism becoming a reality. A special rocket-powered plane that will allow tourists the chance to travel around space is currently in development and will start flights in two years - 2010.

Now granted, those keen enough to spend the £50,000 per ticket will only be able to fly 37 miles above the earth but it will fly at twice the speed of sound and will offer those onboard the viewing spectacular of a lifetime. Ordinary, albeit wealthy, people will be able to see the earth as people like Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have also done.

You have to admit it would be an amazing experience, but I am not too sure I would be brave enough to do it. I like the earth from this perspective - on the ground.

Popularity: 40% [?]

When outer space and Scotland collided

I wonder what it would feel like to experience the power of 1000 nuclear bombs going off all at once? of course, none of us would live to tell the tale if such an occurrence happened near enough to us.

But that is what happened when a meteorite fell from space and landed in north-west Scotland 1.2 billion years ago. Actually the tourist resort of Ullapool stands right in the middle of the crater! thousands of tourists visit this spot each year to view the unusual rock formations.  Academics from Aberdeen and Oxford universities are convinced it was a meteorite that caused the highly unusual rock formations along a 30-mile stretch of coastline.

Previously, it was thought the intricate deposits of brightly coloured and rare minerals found on the Stoer Peninsula were created by volcanic activity. But geologists who spent two years studying tiny samples of rock from the mountain Stac Fada believe they have identified fragments of meteorite.  They say the centre of the crater would be where Ullapool now stands.

Space rubble, including meteorites, left over from the creation of the solar system has been landing on Earth for billions of years. Let’s just hope that earth has seen the last of the really big ones for now!

Popularity: 88% [?]

Could there be two earths out there?

Another Earth could be orbiting one of the Sun’s closest stellar neighbours.  Habitable rocky planets are likely to have formed in the Alpha Centauri system, a trio of stars 4.37 light years, or 25.8 trillion miles, away. And Astronomers are saying  if such worlds exist they could be detected using a dedicated telescope.

This could be great news for the human race to know that if we destroy this planet any further we might have alternative to go to.  Because it is so close, Alpha Centauri would probably be the first star system to be visited if interstellar travel ever becomes possible - a fact that has inspired numerous science fiction stories.  The three stars in the system are binary twins Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and the much smaller and dimmer red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, which is a little nearer the Earth.

Anyone standing on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B would see two “suns” in the sky, a bright “primary” sun and a “secondary” sun which would be much weaker but still many times brighter than the full moon as seen from Earth.  Although Proxima Centauri is considered part of the same star system it is 0.21 light years from the other stars, or 13,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It would only be visible at night.

Popularity: 48% [?]